4min
If you want to generate steady revenue from Google Ads, you need to stay ahead of the competition and be one step ahead in terms of optimisation. Using AdWords carelessly will almost always result in failure, so make sure you think about everything before implementing changes.
PPC managers are usually in the loop on day-to-day operations but they often don't have time to make sure that their campaigns are optimised. This can lead them to fall behind compared with their competitors. One issue that is often the most difficult for PPC marketing teams is dealing with requests from stakeholders without a full understanding of the function of PPC or how a campaign is supposed to work.
This optimisation checklist will help you maximise Google Ads and the useful personalised recommendations that they present.
1. Identifying Negative Keywords
Negative keyword phrases are search terms that you want to be excluded from appearing in your ads. In your AdWords account, you can specify search terms that aren’t suitable for all of your marketing efforts. Think of words, phrases, and terms – both single words and sets of words that, while they might not necessarily be synonymous with the product or service, you do not wish to trigger your ads. For example, if you’re a vendor who specialises in printing services for businesses and need to manage how frequently users see your advert campaign for the search term “free business printing” you can add it to your negative keyword list. Similarly, as Google provides suggestions of search terms similar to those you enter when entering the target keyword “business printing sevices” in this field you might find the following being added automatically.
Don't forget that you can create a total of 5,000 Negative Keywords per AdWords account so have some fun and make sure you're updating your list frequently!
2. Tracking The Performance Of Search Ads
Creating search ads that are triggered by certain keywords is known as “Google responsive search advertisement”. Since this will be your first time starting to create a Google responsive search ad, you need data and statistics related to your product to analyse its performance based on the number of impressions, click-through rates, and conversion rates. To ensure your ads are generating enough data to effectively run your campaign, we suggest that you continue to run these ads for another 30 days before making any optimisations. Here are the steps you can take to see how well your ads are performing:
- Decide which campaign to analyse
- Select "Ads" from the left menu
- Under each ad, click "View asset details"
You can then determine the asset value based on how your ads performed. As the system gathers data, it includes a learning value that scales from low to high. You can use these values to learn how your ads are performing so you can optimise them.
3. Adjusting Location Bids
You can make more money with your business campaigns if you tweak or change the target bids. Based on where the person is, adjustments can be made country, county, city, and postcode to help you get the most out of your keyword purchases. By adjusting the bid, you get to control how much you want to pay for each click on your ad.
- Place your ads where you want them to appear
- Make sure the campaign runs for some time
- Check the locations report to assess how each bid is doing
- Make adjustments as necessary
You can then place higher bids on ads located in locations where people are searching for your products or services. Business Printing providers may find that substantial amounts of their search traffic come from major cities.
4. Using Demographic Targeting
You can exclude certain demographics from your campaign based on their age, gender, occupation, or any other personal characteristics that can be classified. The demographic information can be found in the ad's review section, which is relatively accessible. To do this, follow these steps:
- Select "Demographics" and then "Age" to analyse how your ad groups perform by age group.
- For example, if you want to exclude an age group from an advertisement, highlight that age group in green and select “Exclude from ad group.”
5. Targeting The Right Audience
Audience targeting is a feature you can apply to ad groups that allow you to target specific people based on the content they've consumed. This can be done by making use of certain interests, hobbies, and habits along with previous interactions they've had with your business. You'll want to apply this feature when trying to reach specific customers because it will enable you to quickly and effortlessly target relevant audiences thus boosting the performance of your campaign!
Google has a database of data about each user, website behavior, and customer data (uploaded by you) that can be used to create audience segments. You can use audience targeting with Google Ads campaigns in various ways, such as by retargeting non-converting visitors.
6. Optimising Bids
Bidding on Google Ads works by setting a value for how much you are willing to pay when your ad is shown - the higher your bid, the more you will pay. You can use Google Ads bidding options to reach people who are interested in your product or service.
Google offers various options based on your campaign's business goals. Make sure you outline key performance indicators (KPIs) that can help track the progress of your goal-driven campaigns.
You see, when it comes down to setting up a Google AdWords account, there are no set KPIs applicable to every business out there (there should be if you ask us!). However, by joining the dots, we know that Google's all about providing reliable data at our fingertips so we can dive deeper into how our campaigns are performing.
We can make sure they're hitting those strategic objectives but more importantly that by utilising what we've learned through the provided comprehensive metrics, we can tell if certain elements firing off within an AdWords account are successful or not and adjust accordingly to optimise towards success!
7. Planning And Optimising The Budget
So, you’ve just created an advertisement to market your business, but how do you know which of your possible customers is looking at it? A great way to gauge how well your campaigns are doing and what kind of impact they’re making on your potential customers is by measuring conversion rates against the budget spent.
You should spend the most of your budget on the campaigns that perform best since this not only gets more conversions for the lowest cost but it also gives your company more data points to better understand its target audience, thereby optimising both its message and budget next time around. To maximise budgets, try these strategies:
- Enable conversion tracking for Google Ads
- Organise your campaign groups
- Make small budget adjustments after you figure out what works and what doesn't
8. Remarketing Campaigns
Remarketing campaigns are one last way to take advantage of Google Ads given their extremely cost-effective nature. There are many different formats you can employ including those that will reach previous site visitors, customers interested in your products or services, and those who might have tried to purchase from you but for whatever reason, the transaction failed for them (low funds), and now your business has a second chance at converting that customer!
Never Stop Optimising!
Pay-per-click campaign managers need to relentlessly balance the need for speed and the need for accuracy to optimise campaigns. Their role is to use thorough research combined with insights from user behavior to develop and refine campaigns over time that lead to positive performance and conversion for their clients. PPC marketing is a constantly changing landscape. It takes a relentless dedication to stay abreast of the latest trends and shifts in consumer behavior to succeed.
